Cancer treatments often involve isolating cells that have been determined to be immune, taking them out of the body, and activating them in a laboratory environment before injecting them back into the body. The idea is that these activated, immune cells will help jumpstart the process of developing an immune response to the cancer.

Researchers now at Washington University in St. Louis have been experimenting with activating the immune cells in the presence of drugs that affect cell metabolism with the hope that it will even further enhance the immunotherapy abilities of the cells. And they’ve had some luck.

It’s not yet reached human trials, but the researchers have said:

“We found that this cellular drug treatment increases the activation period of the immune cells,” Amiel said in a press release, “so that when we inject them back into mice bearing melanoma tumors, we get larger immune responses against the tumors and better control of tumor growth.”